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a couple of questions about PC gaming and how many cores is enough/chip speed

sunshinewelly

sunshinewelly

sunshinewelly

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as my thread says - how many cores do most modern games utilize.

also one thing i cant seem to get my head around is that when looking at CPU gaming charts its seems that most tests are done at 1080p.

am i right in thinking that any CPU differences at 1080p between 2 chips will be less if you are gaming at 4K.

I game at 4K on a 60fps TV.

Therefore i assume the differences between any decent modern CPU will not be as big as if i was gaming on a 1080p high rate monitor.
 
From what I understand, the higher the resolution, the more GPU bound you become and therefore the strain on the CPU lessens. Obviously the logic applies in reverse.

Game developers are only just starting to properly move past 4 cores (if they even utilised 4 cores to begin with), so it's probably safe to say that right now 6 cores is the sweet spot for gaming, 8 cores gives you a bit of leeway for the future.

Without dragging the endless AMD vs Intel debate into this, there are circumstances where you do need to consider which CPU vendor you're going with, but outside of those specific use cases it's largely much of a muchness between the top tier 6 and 8 core Intel Coffee Lakes and the top 6 and 8 core AMD Ryzen 2000s.
 
The results in benchmarks is down to the boundary or bottleneck being the GPU at 4k, your rendering 4 times as many pixels so usually the GPU will limit things.

The CPU load is really determined by the FPS. A similar FPS at 1080p and 4k will usually generate a similar load on the CPU, its just by the time you get to 4k and even 1440p in some cases, those benchmarks (usually also at high IQ settings) will be placing a heavier load on the GPU hence it will become the limit. Benchmarks will usually exaggerate the performance difference at 1080p benchmarks with lower IQ settings to lower the load on the GPU and show a more raw comparison between CPU's. Similarly its why at 1440p high refresh rate stuff, your CPU load will go up at say 144hz vs 60hz (with the GPU capable of delivering the frames) as the CPU needs to prepare more frames.

There are some games which can leverage more then 4 cores when available. at 4k 60hz, a modern 6 core + from either side would do a solid job, my preference would be for Intel for higher refresh rates at the moment if the extra outlay can be swallowed.
 
Wait for AMD 3000 which is just around the corner to see if it can reach 5GHz with 8 cores and also see if it has low enough memory latency and high enough IPC to compete with Intel.
 
Personally I wouldn't buy anything with less than 8 cores if I was buying something new.

Some games have been using more then 4 cores for years. It's not a new thing.
 
For 4k, 6 cores ideal, 8 or more cores future-proof.
Most games at 4k will put any actual GPU on its knees.
Lowering resolutions at 1920*1080 will keep the GPU load minimal, but push the CPU, which need to do his things for the GPU to do its bit.
 
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